Epacadostat Plus Keytruda® Appears Effective in Melanoma

Melanoma is a type of skin cancer that often starts in the form of a mole. If detected and treatable with surgery, melanoma has a high cure rate. However, once melanoma invades deeper tissues or spreads from its site of origin, cure rates fall dramatically.

Fortunately, treatment for melanoma has been improving; recently developed effective treatments include those that stimulate the immune system and/or target individual genetic mutations specific to a patient’s cancer cells.

Keytruda is an agent that is FDA-approved, and works by stimulating the immune system to recognize cancer cells. Epacadostat is an agent that blocks an enzyme called ID01, which is implicated in the growth and spread of cancer cells.

Researchers recently conducted an early-phase clinical trial evaluating the combination of Keytruda, and epacadostat in the treatment of 19 patients with melanoma that had spread to distant sites in the body. Patients had not received prior therapy. All patients in this trial have now been followed for an average of 42 weeks.

Overall the melanoma did not progress while on treatment in 74% of patients.

58% of patients experienced a regression of their cancer.

Average survival time with no progression of cancer has not yet been reached.

Treatment was well tolerated.

These results indicate that the treatment combination of Keytruda plus epacadostat appears to provide effective and durable anti-cancer responses among patients with advanced melanoma. Longer follow-up and future clinical trials further evaluating this treatment combination are planned to determine its long-term safety and effectiveness as epacadostat is still in early phases of clinical trials.